Ok guys this is gonna be a non-makeup related post. I'm at home alone and i was going through some of my older pictures to make a "favourites" folder. I thought I could share it here with you guys as well. I mean, you always see my FOTD's but I want you to see more of me and the ppl I love. I feel like I will be more connected to you guys. I'm gonna add a caption for each photo and what it means to me. Most of these pics are from 2-3 years ago. Recent enough that I look like me yet old enough that I actually got emotional looking at them :( These pics are not really in any particular order, as random as I am with my posts, haha!

1. This is me about 2.5 year ago when I first moved in with Marc (who's now my husband). You can see how our apartment was still a mess in the background. I used to love doing braids, at some point though I realized they don't look best on me, lol!

2. Me and the ladies of the family; my mom and my two sisters at my bridal shower in 2007. I'm not actually much taller than my sisters, they're barefoot and I'm wearing 4" heels!

3. This is me and one of my dearest friends for life celebrating New Years Eve in 2006. She now lives in Tennesse and there's not a day that i don't miss her :(

4. Me and Marc at a beach near my parents house in 2006. We were having fun with the kites that day. He's the exact opposite of me (as in more reserved) but he's the only man who's never made me bored, hehe!

5. Another great friend of mine in 2004 as she was feeding me her b-day cake. Be aware of my freaky white eyeliner, lol!

6. Me and my dad dancing on my wedding day. This picture makes me very emotional. I'm definitely a daddy's girl. I guess I never really admitted it until my wedding day. I always saw myself as this independent girl, but my dad is my rock.

7. This is just me dancing the night away at a Persian concert a few years ago. I love Persian dance and it's a pity that I don't get to be in my element that often.

8. Me and another good friend at my bachelorett party in summer of 2007. I love how wasted I look yet i'm still drinking! The onlooking girl is my best friend who was also my maid of honour.

9. Marc and I at our graduation in 2005. For some reason no one told us to fix our gowns before this picture. We both graduated from Mechanical Engineering so we've been through university hell together.

10. My mom and I were taking this picture when my dad jumped in! He likes to be silly sometimes. Isn't my mom freakin gorgeous?

11. Last but not least, this is my favourite engagement photo we took in May 2007. We went to Experimental Farm near where we went to school and the trees were blossoming. It was beyond gorgeous also significant location for us.

I'm not a huge fan of nail designs as I changed my nail polish so frequently (everyday) that I find it kind of a wasted effort. But I wanted to experience more with layering of my sheer and glittery nail polishes. I used a layer of Misa I Will Survive which is a shiny black opaque in one coat polish. I let it air dry and then layered with one coat of Misa Candy Girl polish. Candy girl is a sheer polish with pink and blue glitters. Once layered together, it looks like I'm wearing dark super glittery purple nail polish. Yeah, I said purple! I don't know why it photographed blue, it was in fact purple!

I logged in this morning and noticed that I now have 50 followers! I know this is not a big number compared to other bloggers out there but I'm still so incredibly grateful. Thank you all for taking time out of your days to check out my rambling and hope that you enjoy what I do. In the meanwhile I try to be more creative and add more to the contents of this blog.

We're having a very rainy week here in Ottawa. It's been raining since Sunday and it will continue till Saturday night :( Hence I take my pictures in the bathroom with the flash on. They don't always turn out the best this way but you gotta try. I did this warm combo with various pigments today and like the result, except somehow they make my eyebrows appear lighter than they are. I don't always fill in my brows as they are quite full as it is but maybe I should have today.

I went to my counter today to check out MAC's newest collection, DSquared. I must say, it's a nice little collection and includes two of the greatest MAC products ever, Sculpt n Shape duo and Feline khol liner.

I was personally underwhelmed by this collection since it came out after my love Style Black (lol) and the beautiful dazzleglasse cremes. I did some quick and dirty swatches just in case anyone is interested. I also wanted to do a quick review of the more buzz worthy items.

Greasepaint Stick V: is a gorgeous dark purple liner meant to be used as a base. I like the black GPS I have from Style Black but I was not interested enough to get a purple one.

Greasepaint Stick B: This one looks exactly like Deep Truth in GPS form! I would say if you wanna get one GPS, get either the black or purple one.

Feline: I have gone through two of these bad boys! It's the darkest hottest black liner ever! I use it on my water line and lower lashline. It does smudge on the lower lashline but not if you set with black eyeshadow. I def recommend this khol liner.

Nude Rose l/s: looks exactly like 3N! I would say get this if you missed out on 3N, a nude pink lustre lipstick, that came with the N collection. It's a gorgeous nude pink on a variety of skintones. In my swatch, it looks like it's the same colour as my skin...I guess I see why everyone say 3N is my best nude. Maybe I should go back and get Nude Rose

Blood Red l/s: is a pink berry lipstick and honestly not my cup of tea. I prefer more blue pinks or the nude ones. It looks a little like the berry lipstick that came out with Hello Kitty (the name escapes me now).

Sculpt and Shaping Duos: again get these if you don't already have them! The duo Accentuate and Sculpt work on anyone beween NC/W20 to NC/NW30. I have a full pan of Sculpt (the Pro Pan) and use it almost everyday as my contouring shade and my MAC shade is in between NW25 and NW30. I find it weird that they didn't include a duo for deeper skintones.

I came away with only Feline....well and another dazzleglass creme, this time Creme Allure.

I wore this look to go out last night and used some of my new products. We had a couple of martinis and listened to good music to prepare for our party of today. Today we had all of my husband's relatives (those who live in Ottawa) plus my parents over for brunch. It was a busy day but actually a lot of fun. My mother in law is going back to the Caribbean on Wednsday so this was a good opportunity to have the whole family over at the same time.

Anyway, moving on to the look. I need to get my eyebrows fixed again so ignore those, lol!

I just can't get enough of Style black! I posted my haul No.1 from the Pro Store early launch here. I went back yesterday evening to pick up some more stuff as I had more B2M's and also wanted to check out the new Dazzleglasse cremes. I had totally forgotten about them when I went to the pro store, lol! I also hit up Shoppers after and picked up a Lise Watier glitter liner.

Here's the picture of everything together:

I ended up getting the greasepaint stick and Cinderfella from Style Black.The greasepaint stick is a new product that's kinda like shadesticks, except much creamier. I'm planing on using this as a base for my smokey eye looks. Right now I just use a black gel liner (Blacktrack). I think the GPS is much creamier and it probably will be easier to use. It's pretty much a black colour with tiny amount of shimmer and hints of purple in it. The MA that was helping said that the GPS is great as base on the lid but not so great on its own, especially on the lower lashline as it might smudge if not layered with eyeshadows. This product looks especially great under the new MES, just yummy.CinderfellaMES was the other MES on my list and I'm happy I got it. It's a black base packed with silver shimmer. This MES and Young Punk are the two prettiest IMO and I would definitely recommend them. Just make sure to use a good base (paint pots or anything creamy is your best bet as opposed to UDPP) and to eliminate fallout use them with mixing medium. Just one drop on the brush is sufficient.

I also checked out the new dazzleglasses and was pretty pleased with the selection. The new dazzleglasses are called dazzleglass cremes but not because they have no sparkle. Actually quite a few of these are as sparkly as the original dazzleglasses. I found at least 5 of them to be much more pigmented than the dazzleglasses. I picked up:Amorous (dark rich red) which I imagine will looks great over vampy lipsticks such as So Scarlet or Night Violet and Kirsch. It is pigmented to wear on its own too though. This one I found was the most sparkly of the bunch.I also picked up My Favourite Pink which is gorgeous light barbie pink. This will look great over most of my lipsticks since they are mostly either pink or nude pink, lol! This one "can" be worn on its own if you wear two layers but I think it's best over lipsticks. It has tiny silver-ish sparkles and is super pretty.

I also picked up Night Magic glitter liner by Lise Watier from SDM. I've become such a glitter addict, lol! This one is a gorgeous royal blue glitter and I'm dying to wear it over a blue eyeshadow on my lower lashline, probably will soon do that.

I had some awesome hauling yesterday which I will post about when I get home tonight. Right now I'm gonna quickly post my look and get to work coz there are tones of things to be done in the office today before the weekend. What are everyone's plans for this weekend? The hubby and I have his entire family plus mine over for brunch on Sunday. So we're probably gonna take it easy on Saturday and relax and maybe go downtown for a couple of martinis and jazz.

Yey, today is Style Black Day! I find it funny that I'm this excited even though I've already bought most of what I wanted. I will be meeting with one of the Specktra members who also lives in Ottawa in Rideau Centre to get our Style Black fix. For today's look, I tried to imitate the Tone Gray quad that was released with Trends F/W. I know the colours aren't exactly the same but they are close enough for me. I was happy with how this came out and I decided to go for darker lips as I'm going to MAC straight from work and this seemed SB appropriate, lol!

Does anyone else think I'm getting very lame with my FOTD titles? I do! I always try hard to do creative colour combination so much that I can't get to to give them creative titles too, haha! My mother in law who's staying with us for another week loved my makeup today. I offered to do her makeup this evening and she happily agreed. That's great for me coz I get more practice on ppl with different skintone and features that I'm used to (she's half black half native american).

Here's the look. I still have a hard time blending two matte colours together so I hope this came out ok.

Sexy Divide is definitely up there as my top purple nail polish (it ties with Color Club Electronica and OPI Louvre Me Louvre me Not). It's a very dark purple and came out I believe in fall 2008. I actually have quite a few Essies from fall 2008 collection and love them all. They need to do more edgy colours like this.

On the other hand, right now that I look at my nail pictures I'm not happy with the condition of my fingers; they look so freakin dry. I need to use my Lush cuticle cream more. I so envy bloggers like Scrangie and their prefct nails :/ Though I'm very happy with the shape and lenght of my fingers and nails, I don't like how dry they get, especially from September till the end of winter.

This look was so much more vibrant in person but it's raining so I had to take my pics in the bathroom with flash :/ It's dark as hell outside. I have strained a muscle in my neck and can hardly move it so I have a feeling today is gonna be a long day. How's everyone's week going so far? I'm in the office all day (no site inspection) and have a box full of construction documents to review. It's gotta be done before end of the day. Wish me luck!

I decided to wear a full face of Style Black yesterday. Can I say how much I love Young Punk MES? It's so freaking gorgeous over Artifact and I had next to no fall out unlike other MES I've tried in the past. I'm def picking up at least one more Style Black MES. I went for the whole drama with dark eyes and dark lips but changed the lips later since we were going to my folks and I didn't want to freak my dad out, lol!

Like I mentioned in my FOTD post, I got a chance to see the much anticipated MAC collection (at least for me), Style Black yesterday in Montreal Pro store. This collection is amazing you guys! It's everything I wanted and more. I only got three things as my trip was unexpected but I will pick up at least another MES when the collection officially launches this week.

Here's my two cents:

Lipsticks: Black Knight is not as black as you would think, it's more like a black-ish gray (at least on my lips). It's also a Creamsheen formula so it's kinda slippery. The two mattenes are ah-may-ziiiiing!!! I so wanted to buy both! I ended up only getting Night Violet which is a more purple version of Kirsch released last year. I love this kinda dark lipsticks. Midnight Media is a true black. If you want black lips I would say get Midnight Media over Black Knight

Glimmerglasses: These really surprised me. I was totally going to skip them but Black Fire was so hot over Night Violet that I had to have it. Bling Black looks more green-gold than true gold with black base so i skipped it. Blackware is black but not very opaque. In general all of these are kinda sheer and are best paired with lipsticks. I had one set of B2M with me so I B2M'd for Black Fire.

MES: These are the star of Style Black IMO. All three are gorgeous and that's saying a lot as I hate MES in general. I wanted to buy all for but for now I only got Young Punk which is a gorgeous black base with purple/pink glitters. I will be picking up Cinderfella (black base with silver glitters, yumm), this Thursday.

CCB's: This are gorgeous black bases but I hear that CCB's crease a lot. They're not must haves for me but they swatch beautifully.

Grease Paintstick: Ok, so the pro store I went to had already sold out of this :( So I didn't get to play with it. I need to see it this Thursday.

Nail Lacquers: I did not play with these as I'm not a fan of MAC nailpolishes, but if you are make sure to check out Baby Goth Girl. Seriously gorgeous polish!

Face Products: again a skip for me as I don't like LE skin care.

In general, this was the best collection MAC has come out with for a long time. I'm really impressed and cannot wait to play with everything again this Thursday. Happy hauling everyone and hope that this was helpful.

Nail of the day is You Don't Know Jacques, the Suede version recently released by OPI. I have the original version and honestly the suede version looks nothing like it. I wonder why they just didn't give it another name :/ I do love the suede version though, I even like it better with a shiny top coat. So I wore mine with a layer on Seche Vite on top. As usual, no application issue with OPI.

Here it is on my nail. Please excuse the tear you see on one of the nails :(

My husband and I took my mother in law on a day trip to Montreal yesterday. As Montreal is only 2 hours drive away from Ottawa we went in the morning and came back late at night. We even had time to go to the Pro Store so i can check out Style Black! I will explain my thoughts on the collection in the next post. But this is the look I wore on our day trip and the MA that was helping me loved my makeup. He even asked me how I'd done it :P I'm also trying out MUFE Duo Matte and so far it's love!